The Hindu
Life in the Mathura cult camp
by Sweta Goswami
Ram Vriksh Yadav’s illegal settlement was virtually an independent
republic where he had worked out every detail of the lives of his
followers.
Lying on a government hospital bed in Vrindavan with a fractured foot
and nursing bruises, Bimla Devi, 38, recalls the time she spent at
Jawahar Bagh, Mathura. Till June 2, before dinner was about to be served
at 4 p.m. when police bulldozers broke through the walls of the park,
members of the Swadhin Bharat Subhash Sena had led an orderly life. In
the melee that followed Ms. Devi lost contact with her husband and her
sister. She has no idea where they are now or if they are alive.
After her marriage Ms. Devi was unable to have a child and began falling
ill frequently. That’s when disciples of Jai Gurudev spoke of his
miracles and the power of his blessings. She became a follower in 2006.
“Since then I have been his worshipper. When Babaji died in 2012, we
were not allowed to see his dead body and were kicked out of his ashram.
All of us demanded his death certificate from the DM (district
magistrate) Mathura and that is how the protest at Jawahar Bagh began.
Netaji had fearlessly fought for us,” she says.
It was Yadav’s fiery oratory that drew both her and her husband closer
to him. She still was not able to bear children but six years into her
childless marriage, she began looking after her sister’s children —
Sunny Deol (10) and Rinkle (8) — as her own. All six of them — Ms. Devi,
her husband, her sister, her sister’s husband and their children —
lived in a single-room jhuggi. There were roughly 2,500 living similarly.
The beautiful pond-facing district horticulture officer’s (DHO) quarter
inside the park was taken over by the messiah. He turned it into a
full-fledged home with two ACs, heater, computer, toasters,
mixer-grinder, bathrooms and even a treadmill. His followers lived in
tents in the gardens and toilets covered with cloth for privacy — for
this the park’s rainwater drainage channels were used.
A commune in a park
Ram Vriksh Yadav, ‘Netaji’, as the children of the camp referred to him,
had worked out every detail of the lives of the followers down to a T.
Each morning, precisely at 8 a.m., Ms. Devi joined scores of other women
to stand in queue for the daily prarthana (prayer). The men and
women lined up separately in front of a stage. The morning prayers took
place on a stage about 30 metres from the main gate. Led by an elderly
person chosen by Yadav, the prayers lasted 20 minutes. The cult’s sky
blue flag, with half of the Indian map drawn on a white globe, fluttered
atop it. At prayer time the sprawling Jawahar Bagh reverberated with
chants, more anthem than prayer — officials claim Yadav wanted to wrap
it into a national anthem of his Azad Hind Sarkar. “Sankalp hai shaheedo ka, deskbhakto ki manzil laksh, Swadhin Bharat ka jhanda lehrane laga... Jai Hind, Jai Subhash,” Ms. Devi recalls the song.
Children and those part of various teams were awake by 6 a.m. for
training. “While children did PT, the men busied themselves in physical
activities and self-defence with sticks,” says Ms. Devi. Breakfast was
ready to be served from 8.30 a.m. to 12 p.m. There was no lunch. Dinner
was served from 4 p.m. to 8 p.m. Separate enclosures were built for men
and women to eat their meals. The men laid out the mats on the ground to
sit on. The women would serve food to women and men to men.
“Sometimes there would be khichdi and that was restricted to three
servings. But usually breakfast meant three rotis and salt without any
oil. But dinner used to be good. There used to be rice, dal and sabzi,”
says Komal who had come to Mathura from Ludhiana to find her parents,
Moti Lal Maurya (59) and Lakhi Devi (52) — both in Mathura jail now. Mr.
Maurya had left his job as an LIC agent, their two-storey house and
five children in Ludhiana in 2014 to stay at Jawahar Bagh.
Work was clearly defined. Women were responsible for sweeping and making
rotis and rice, the men would guard the precincts, take care of
maintenance work such as installing makeshift electricity poles. There
was a team for supervising the canteen, one to maintain cleanliness and
one for gardening.
To be allowed to stay in their “ashram” residents had to be disciplined
and yes, there were rules. Nobody could go out of the gate without
citing the reason, servings of food were fixed, plucking fruits from the
orchard was meant only for a specific team and not the rest of the
residents, photography inside the park was prohibited and littering,
petty fights or even arguments among residents was punishable.
“Netaji would beat the hell out of a wrongdoer. Once two men were
fighting over water, one of them was beaten with thick wooden sticks. On
other occasions, he would punish by asking the person to pay for a
day’s food of all the residents,” says Hazari Lal Gupta, a shopkeeper
from Rewa district in Madhya Pradesh who had come to stay in Jawahar
Bagh. One day when an inmate’s child killed a bird, he was asked to fund
the ‘bhandara’ ration for the day.
In 1986, Mr. Gupta happened to be in Allahabad when Jai Gurudev was
holding a week-long programme in the city. He attended it and became his
bhakt (devotee). “From his talks I came to believe he was God. I
visited Mathura for his darshan four times a year.” He then took part
in Yadav’s ‘Vidhi sandesh satyagraha yatra’. They came to Mathura with
the primary quest of knowing the fate of their guru, who was reported to
have died. “In 2012, when they said Baba had died, we were not allowed
to see his body and chased away with sticks. We were not allowed any
hearing. Where have they hidden him? All we wanted to know was if he is
alive, where is he? If he is dead, give us the death certificate as
proof. We came to Mathura to just know the truth.”
Jawahar Bagh also had a homoeopathy clinic with two doctors and a van
came every Friday for those who needed allopathic medicine.
Steady stream of visitors
For the inhabitants of Jawahar Bagh, which until two years ago used to
be a recreational park for the locals, visits by different lawyers were
routine.
Mintu Singh explains it simply: Netaji was preparing for “the final
battle”. Admitted to the District Government Hospital, Vrindavan, the
23-year-old is in pain. A bullet grazed his left cheek on June 2 when
the police entered Jawahar Bagh. Mr. Singh is one of seven in the same
government hospital in Vrindavan where Ms. Devi is admitted.
Then there were influential people who would come in red beacon cars to
meet the cult leader. Whenever someone important came, Netaji would ask
the women to prepare fresh bel (wood apple) sherbet plucked from
the orchards. Many times Superintendent of Police Mukul Dwivedi, who
died during the June 2 raid, had come. Activity in the orchard would
increase at night with trucks carrying food supplies coming in, and
trees being cut for different purposes.
For a week from March 14, Jawahar Bagh resembled a colony lit up for
Diwali. It was celebration time as the Swadhin Bharat Subhash Sena had
completed two years of their “satyagraha” here. Decorative lights were
neatly laid out by the “satyagrahis” and Yadav had organised satsangs
for six days. The seventh day was the gala ‘bhandara’, to which
high-ranked officials and politicians were also invited.
Most inhabitants were farmers and peasants or did menial jobs, others
ran kirana shops and came from Bihar, Punjab, Madhya Pradesh,
Chhattisgarh, and other cities of Uttar Pradesh. However, not everyone
who came into Jawahar Bagh came for this cause. Yadav and his aides had
promised employment and land pockets to some. “They would send pamphlets
promising jobs. Then some people were made to stand at the railway
stations and important bus stops to convince farmers who arrive in the
city to join them,” says Sanjay Chaudhary, a resident of Jawahar Bagh
Colony that shares its boundary wall with the park.
When the government cut off the electricity supply about two months ago,
followers had erected bamboo poles for makeshift light poles which were
powered by solar panels. Loudspeakers were fixed on trees on all sides
of the park through which calls for prayer meets, food and exercises
were made apart from special announcements.
It was only in January this year that Yadav began classes for children.
For this the park’s decorative waterbody that had dried up became a
classroom. The sides were painted black for use as writing boards. As
well as to paint slogans such as ‘Shaheedon ke gurudev Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose… Mera Netaji ka jhanda ferhana vishwa mein (Unfurl
Netaji’s flag around the world).’ There was no set pattern for
teaching. Anyone who was reasonably educated could teach. Classes went
on till ten.
The followers’ unshakeable faith
Mintu Singh also does not know where his family scattered after June 2.
Eight of them — his parents and six siblings — came from Bareilly in
2014 to live with 2,500 other cult followers at Jawahar Bagh, located in
the heart of Mathura and spread over 270 acres. But it would be a
mistake to presume that Mr. Singh is devastated by the turn of events.
He sits upright on his blood-stained bed and speaks with passion about
his leader Ram Vriksh Yadav, the deceased self-styled god-man Jai
Gurudev whom he and other cult members refer to as “bhagwan ji”, and how
the ‘Azad Hind Sarkar’ is going to rule the country one day.
Nodding in agreement, six other patients in the ward, including Ms. Devi, chant “Jai Hind! Jai Subhas!”
sweta.goswami@thehindu.co.in
Corrections & Clarifications:
A previous version of this article mentioned Rewari as a district in
Madhya Pradesh. The name of the district is Rewa. The correction has
been carried out post publication.
